The present invention, in some embodiments thereof, relates to a system and method for a home network to steer its roaming users to preferred partner mobile operators at a roaming location.
Nowadays, Steering of Roaming (SoR) technology is commonly used by the great majority of mobile operators around the world. SoR technology allows mobile operators to control or steer their mobile users to register with particular mobile networks when roaming outside their home network. Given these capabilities, operators have the basic means to start negotiating for better prices, as they can now steer users to the network that offers them the best prices, or alternatively, they could promise to steer users in the future in return for a better deal, although in practice this is rarely done.
SoR allows operators to formulate Roaming Discount Agreements, or simply Discount Agreements, between them, instead of using flat charges. Quite a number of forms of Discount Agreements have been formulated, and are typically built of several tiers, in which each price tier is priced differently, and typically assigned to a certain traffic volume. This allows operators to reduce the price only if their partner creates a large enough traffic volume, or more generally to relate unit charges to overall usage.
Due to relatively complex Discount Agreements, it is difficult to find the optimal steering of the mobile registrations that may result in the lowest cost to the home operator. Today, operators typically steer their users by manually setting steering goals such as percentages of users in each network. In more advanced systems such as the Starhome IPN, operators are able to aim at an accurate amount of traffic sent to each operator, or even reach a certain cost based on flat fees. But the effect of different unit costs depending on overall usage or the effects of Discount Agreements remain outside the equation.